Work stuff

• We’re settling into a good rhythm with Village One and I’m really enjoying our current team size with six people. It’s not chaotic, but enough is happening to keep every day interesting and surprising. Good team vibes, we have cool clients (just started work with the Sovereign Tech Fund for example) and last month we even managed to work enough hours to rake in a decent amount of money. Hooray!
• I’ve also reached out to two conferences to talk about our cooperative model. Fingers crossed.
• A few weeks ago we applied for funding from the GründungsBONUS, which exists to boost new innovative companies. They came back with some initial feedback, telling us we should consider retracting our application because what we’re doing doesn’t seem innovative – after all, there are hundreds of other studios out there providing design and development services. Fair point, I guess, but also: sigh. So I cracked my knuckles and wrote five pages about our core ideas and innovation. Let’s see what they say when we re-submit our application.
• Sailed through my first serious DDoS attack last month, when a client website got absolutely hammered with random requests (in the hundreds of millions in just a few hours). We quickly added Cloudflare and started blocking entire countries, suspicious requests and added all kinds of security measures. I learned a lot and I’m somewhat glad it happened before my holidays, but also, please, let’s not do this again any time soon. Shout-out to Fortrabbit for holding our hand the entire time!

Personal stuff

• Holidays! Tomorrow we’re going to the UK again, Yorkshire to be precise. Gonna be a long drive, but I’m very much looking forward to spend more time in the calm English countryside.
• We had a wonderful in-person book swap event in August, with a dozen or so people, in Berlin-Kreuzberg at a beer garden. Super nice! I walked home with the Foundation trilogy, mainly because I’m watching the tv series right now, but I have yet to decide whether I’ll actually read it. The next event is already planned: join us, bring a book, take another one home!
• Great movies we watched over the last weeks: Polite Society (you’ll like this if you liked Everything Everywhere All at Once), Past Lives (ooh, the melancholy) and How to Blow Up a Pipeline (still not sure what to make of this one, but it was TENSE).
• New book that caught my eye: Systemsturz. Not sure if it’s available in English (original is Japanese).
• Another new book, coming out Sep 12: The Free People’s Village, I think I’ll have to pick this one up as well.
• Loving the morning dog walks before work at the moment: Golden September light, not too warm, not too cold, usually walking around Köpenick’s old town, sometimes in the Schlossgarten. Dreamy. If only there were fewer cars, sometimes feels like real-life frogger.
• Of all my chili plants this year only one survived and it grew way too slowly to bear any fruit. Will take it inside and see if I can get it through winter. Maybe it’s ready for some action next spring.